We have more than 220 purple baby hats now, so I am determined to make a few because you readers are putting me to shame. Earlier this week (or was it last week?) I showed you my first hat, which had blue and purple stripes. In the last couple of days, I have finished two more. One has blue and purple stripes in a different pattern but with the same yarns, and the other has completely different yarns.

This is my My Life doll, Maura, wearing one of the purple baby hats I made.

Someone wrote or said a couple of weeks ago that it was difficult to figure out the size of the hats from photos. She’s right. These hats that I just made are newborn size. And to prove it, I put one of the hats on my My Life doll (18-inch doll from Walmart).

And now for some event news. First, A Stitch in Time down in Farmingdale is organizing a trip to the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival on Saturday. And while I’m not a big fan of Maryland Sheep & Wool, I do like Michele Vail, the owner of A Stitch in Time, so if you want to go to the festival, get in touch with her.

Ann Budd has a new collection of sock patterns from some of her favorite designers, and all of them are not traditional.

Second, Ann Budd is coming to the Woodbridge Library on May 17, which I think is a Thursday. She’ll be speaking and signing books at 7 p.m.. You remember, I reviewed her latest sock book, “New Directions in Sock Knitting” recently. I can’t wait to meet her. Should be a great evening.

And finally, I can tell you how to get tickets for In Stitches, In Person, our very own knitting event with Nicky Epstein and me at the Bound Brook Methodist Church’s Asbury Hall on June 25. This will be an all-day event with Nicky and other speakers, a place to sit and knit (we’ll even have free purple yarn if you want to make baby hats for the Click for Babies campaign) and lots of vendors with yarn, T-shirts, handmade glass buttons and much more. The church will be selling food for lunch, and there are plenty of restaurants down the street. I am getting very excited.

Here’s the link for ticket sales, and we are limited by the fire code to about 500 people, so get your tickets early: https://tickets.mycentraljersey.com/e/in-stitches-in-person.

You may have noticed that I’ve dug up some old In Stitches videos that are running with my blog. At MyCentralJersey.com, we’ve discovered that readers love videos and they will even watch the old ones. Today, I’ve got my favorite video, Llama Shearing at Woods Edge Farm. If you are reading this blog on the old server, the one where you have to scroll way down to read the post, then go over to www.mycentraljersey.com/institches to watch it.

For weeks, I’ve been dreading the lace yoke on my Zephirine cardigan, which was designed by Angela Hahn and published in the Spring 2014 issue of Interweave Knits. The sweater is knitted first as a one-piece body from the bottom to the armholes, then you knit the sleeves and add them in the appropriate places, and then you knit the yoke as once piece. The trick is lining up the ribbing in the body to the stems of the leaves in the lace.

I have begun the lace part of the yoke on my Zephirine cardigan. YEAH!

Well, I finally started the lace tonight, and it’s going pretty well. It takes some concentration, and the first time I did it, I misunderstood the chart and alligned the ribs to the wrong spot. In the lace, but I ripped that out and started over. It looks pretty good. I’ve been watching American Pickers for the last few rows, and it’s still going just fine.

Sometimes, facing what you dread is a smart move.

The Mixed Moods sweater has random stripes in shades of aqua and turquoise, defined by thin stripes of purple.

Honestly, this afternoon, as I was picking up fallen branches and twigs in my front yard, I was contemplating putting the Zephirine aside now because it’s wool and I probably won’t wear it till the fall. Last year, I started a cotton sweater, the Mixed Moods sweater that I mentioned last week, and it would be perfect to work on right now. But I’m glad I’m finishing up the Zephirine first, before I go back and finish that cotton sweater. The lace is fun, and it will feel really good to finish another sweater for myself, even if I can’t use it right away.

It will be good to finish the Mixed Moods sweater too, but I don’t know yet what I’m going to wear it with. I guess I need a decent pair of white pants.

Hard to believe it was just a week ago that many of us were getting high on yarn fumes and loading up our credit cards with yarn purchases on the NJ Wool Walk. Well, that’s over, and now we’re recovering by knitting and crocheting as fast as we can.

When I was cleaning up my house to get it ready for Andrea to see it (it never got really clean, but it was much improved), I mislaid a bag of purple sport-weight yarn I’d set aside for baby hats. The other day, I finally found it, and since then, I finished one hat and started a second.

I am adding some blue to my first baby hats in a effort to stretch my orchid yarn. I also think that mom’s of boys are more likely to like hats with a little blue in them.

The orchid yarn I was using is in short supply, so I am knitting it with blue stripes to make it last longer. This also makes the hats a bit more masculine, and I think this is a good idea because I’ve heard complaints that Click for Babies gets plenty of girls’ hats but not so many guys’ hats.

I am really liking this book, “A dozen beanies for baby,” which I reviewed last year.

As I was cleaning up, I came across a book I’d reviewed last year, “A dozen beanies for baby” from Annie’s Knitting (publishers of Creative Knitting and Creative Crochet magazines). There are some great hats in there, all knitted, and one of them is really simple, the blue-and-white striped one on the front cover. I’m using that as the basic pattern for the stitch count, and I’m varying the stripes from hat to hat.

Thanks to a prolific crocheter from South River and the knit-and-crochet group that meets at Centerbridge II in Bridgewater, we’ve reached 200 hats now, so early next week, I hope to take them to Prevent Child Abuse NJ. And then on to the next 200.

A couple of observations, though. Some of you are sneaking in other colors than purple. So far, I’ve received two aqua hats (the knitter must’ve known that’s my favorite color) and three pink hats, which I think someone thought might have been ok, but it’s not. All of them are beautiful hats, but not for this project. I’ll tell you how we can use those in a minute.

Please, though, make your hats at least 50 percent purple. If you want to add other colors, that’s fine, but the hat needs to be more purple than anything else.

What we’re doing with the other hats

This week, I heard from a Girl Scout from Watchung Hills Regional High School who is teaching her fellow Girl Scouts to make baby hats on a knitting loom. Kathryn, the girl who contacted me, is working on her Gold Award, which involves leading fellow scouts in a community service project. So the girls are making baby and children’s hats to be used at Children’s Specialized Hospital in New Brunswick and Beth Israel Hospital in Newark. Some will be used as chemo caps for the children, and others will be used to keep premies warm. So I am giving all the nonpurple hats I get to Kathryn to be used at those hospitals.

We don’t waste your good knitting and crocheting, especially when it’s done with so much love and generosity!

In coming weeks, you’ll be hearing more about Kathryn and her project, and I’ll be telling you how you can contribute to it directly if you want.

Thank you again for all the great hats you are making. Remember, next month, we start on adult chemo caps, too.

Thje Mushishi Baby Jacket and Hat was originally published in One Skein Wonders for Babies, edited by Judith Durant and is reprinted here with permission from Storey Publishing. I

As promised in today’s In Stitches column in the Courier News and Home News Tribune, here is a free pattern from the book “One Skein Wonders for Babies,” edited by Judith Durant. This pattern was written by Judith Durant and copyrighted 2015 by Storey Publishing.

It is reprinted here with permission from the publisher That permission only gives us the right to publish it digitally here. By extension, you have permission to print out a copy for your personal use. You do not have permission to make multiple copies and distribute them to all your friends, but you are very welcome to refer your friends or the members of your knitting group to come here and print out the pattern for themselves. The photo is by Geneveve Hoffman.

Here is the pattern:

Mushishi Jacket and Cap Set

Designed by Judith Durant

The Mushishi Hat and Jacket are knitted with Mushishi yarn from Plymouth Co.

Keep your toddler warm in this handsome ensemble with an easy-to-knit pattern. The buttons on the jacket are decorative, being sewn over snaps, and the fringes on top of the hat are knitted in one continuous piece.

US 7 (4.5 mm) straight needles and US 6 (4 mm) circular needle 36″/90 cm long for jacket; US 7 (4.5 mm) circular needle 16″/40 cm long and set of five US 7 (4.5 mm) double-point needles for cap or size needed to obtain correct gauge

•Maintaining established stockinette edge stitches, work in Andalusian pattern stitch as for right front until piece measures 8″/20 cm, ending with a RS row.

Shaping the Neck

•Continue in pattern and bind off 2 stitches at the beginning of every WS row 2 times. You now have 24 stitches.

•Decrease 1 stitch at the beginning of every WS row 4 times. You now have 20 stitches.

•Continue if necessary until length of piece matches right front.

JOINING THE SHOULDERS AND KNITTING THE SLEEVES

• Join the front and back shoulders together with a three-needle bind off (see page 282).

•Measure down 4″/10 cm from the shoulder seam on both fronts and back and place a marker.

The Right Sleeve

•With right side facing and beginning at the marker on the right back, pick up and knit (see page 281) 40 stitches between the markers. Purl 1 row.

•Maintaining 1 stockinette edge stitch on each end of every row, begin Andalusian pattern stitch and at the same time decrease 1 stitch with ssk at the beginning and k2tog at the end of every 8th row 5 times. You now have 30 stitches. Work even in pattern until sleeve measures 7″/18 cm. Work K1, P1 rib for 6 rows. Bind off loosely.

The Left Sleeve

•With right side facing and beginning at the marker on the left front, pick up and knit 40 stitches between the markers. Continue as for right sleeve.

•Beginning at the lower side seams, seam the sides and the under sleeves on both sides with full-stitch mattress stitch (see page 281).

KNITTING THE BUTTON BAND AND COLLAR

Note: The bands and collar are worked in one piece. In order to pick up the stitches along the neck edge onto one circular needle, you’ll need to pull a length of cable through the previous stitches to free the needle to make the turns. This is similar to the Magic Loop method of knitting (see page 280).

•With smaller circular needle, right side facing, and beginning at the lower right front, pick up and knit 44 stitches to neck edge; cast on 1 stitch and mark this stitch; pick up and knit 18 stitches to shoulder seam; pick up and knit 18 back neck stitches; pick up and knit 18 stitches along to end of neck edge; cast on 1 stitch and mark this stitch; pick up and knit 44 stitches to lower left front. You now have 144 stitches.

• *Using the backward loop method, cast on 20 stitches, being sure to snug the first stitch up to the next stitch of the round.

• Row 1: K19, k2tog, turn.

• Row 2: Slip 1, k19, turn.

• Row 3: Bind off 18, k2tog, pass the remaining stitch from the bind off over the k2tog and off the needle; slip 1 from right to left needle, pass the second stitch on the right needle over the slipped stitch; slip remaining stitch back to left needle.

•Repeat from * until you’ve used all stitches and have 16 fringes. Fasten off.

The Drawstring

•Cast on 80 stitches. Knit 2 rows. Bind off.

Finishing

•Weave in all ends. Thread the drawstring in and out of the eyelets. Pull up tight and tie.

Ann Budd has a new collection of sock patterns from some of her favorite designers, and all of them are no traditional.

It can probably be said that Ann Budd, editor of “New directions in sock knitting,” is one of the most influential knitters of our time. As the former editor of Interweave Knits magazine and a current senior book editor at Interweave, Budd has been a driving force in some of the most important books about modern knitting, including The “Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns,” “The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns,” and “‘The Knitter’s Handy book of Top-Down Sweaters.”

She is also the author of “Getting Started Knitting Socks,” “Interweave Presents Knitted Gifts,” “Knitting Green” and “Simple Style.” And if that weren’t enough, she’s the coauthor of “Bag Style,” “Color Style,” “Lace Style” and “Wrap Style.” In 2011, she edited “Sock Knitting Master Class,” and it is such a good reference book that when I gave away most o

Many of the socks in this book are knitted in ways you have never seen before, like these Zick-Zacks.

f my sock-pattern books last year, I couldn’t part with this one. Now she has edited a new book, filled with sock patterns for those who like a challenge. They’re knitted “every which way.”

As most of you know, I don’t knit socks. This probably stems from a lifelong knowledge that my father never liked the handmade socks my mother made for him. She made them before I was born, so I know about it, this was probably a big trauma in my family. After reading Lara Neel’s book, “Sock Architecture” I realized Mom was just using the wrong sock construction for Dad, but I still haven’t made sock yet.

However, if I was knitting socks, I would cherish this new book about knitting from every which way, not only because “every which way” was a favorite saying of my grandfather, but because this book does have you knitting in every direction. It has socks with mitered squares, socks with intarsia-in-the-round, socks with vertical ripples, socks with asymmetrical cables and much more.

If you’ve ever tried knitting intarsia in the round, you know how challenging it can be. These Harlequin Socks use Anne Berk’s Annetarsia method, which solves all those problems.

So let me look in more detail at a few of these socks. Anne Berk’s Harlequin socks are knitted using her revolutionary Annetarsia or intarsia-in-the-round method. The socks have vertical stripes with diamonds of contrasting colors superimposed on the thinner stripes. As Berk says, “Change the colors as desired to make the most of your stash.” I like them because they’re unusual, and they look like they’d be fun to knit. I tried Annetarsia after I got Berk’s book about it a couple of years ago. It’s a good method, and I think it would work well on these socks.

Another sock I really like happens to follow the Harlequin socks in this book. It’s Carissa Browning’s Cumulus, which is made with a scallop stitch. You start with Judy’s Magic Cast-on and grow two scallops from that. And so forth. Because of the constantly changing stitch count in this pattern, the potential for pooling diminishes a lot, so a variegated yarn works really well.

Some of the sock pairs in this book don’t match, but that’s intentional. For example, the Bertha socks are made in blue and gold. One sock has a gold cuff

Several designs in this book, including these Bertha Socks, are pairs of mirror images of each other.

and a gold-on-blue stranded knitting pattern. The other sock has the opposite: a blue cuff with a blue-on-gold pattern. Similarly, Cat Bordhi’s Enduring Stripes have blue cuff and toes on one sock and white cuffs and toes on the other. Kate Atherly’s Mirror Image socks do something similar.

I especially want to mention Natalia Vasilieva’s Smokey Zickzack socks, which make use of garter-stitch zig-zags to descend up and down the socks, instead of ring around them horizontally. They look like bolts of lightning. Figuring out the math to do socks like this would be very daunting for me. Vasilieva must be a genius.

If you are a devoted sock knitter, you will want to check this book out for your personal library. “New directions in Sock Knitting” is supposed to retail for $26.99, but it is being offered for a limited time on the Interweave website for just $18.10 in paperback or $21.17 in digital format. I bet you’ll like it.

Yesterday afternoon, I took a nap, sorted and discarded some papers and worked on the Zephirine cardigan. The good news is that I found a check that a friend had sent me which I lost weeks ago. The bad news is that I had to rip out 12 rows of the sweater because when I thought I had reached the row to begin the lace, I had 16 stitches too many.

Having the right number of decreases is crucial to making the lace at the top of the yoke.

I figured out that if I did two more decrease rows, I could easily get to my target number of 253 stitches. However, I was not going to do both decrease rows right there in the sweater because it would have looked funny. The pattern says to decrease on the right side row seven times, then very other right side row three times, for a total of 10 times. But I needed 12 decrease rows. So I ripped out all the rows where I had decreased every fourth row, then did an eighth row to match the first seven decreases. Now I’ve got the first fourth-row decrease done, and I have three more to go.

I’m not sure how this happened. It’s possible that the mistake is in the pattern, but I’m wondering if I started knitting the largest size and then switched along the way to knitting the next to largest size. I’m not going to worry about it. If the sweater turns out to be slightly big in the armholes, because of the extra rows, that should be fine. It’s a little discouraging to have to do this extra work, but there’s an old saying that if it’s worth doing something, it’s worth doing right. Getting the right number of stitches at the base of the lace is absolutely essential.

In Stitches in Person

This week, our online expert Jenna Intersimone, and I will be setting up the website where you can order tickets for our In Stitches in Person event with Nicky Epstein, me, and some local knitting experts. Tickets will be $10 for subscribers to the Courier News or Home News Tribune, $15 for others, and $20 at the door. We’ll also be reaching out to potential vendors for the event. I’ll have more information for you in a few days. Two vendors already have indicated an interest, so we’ve made a verbal commitment to them. Vendor tables are only $25.

Library appearances

This morning, April 18, I will be at the Warren Library in the Warren Township Municipal Complex on Mountain Boulelvard. This Thursday, I will be at the knitting group at the Centerbridge II senior living home in Bridgewater, where some of the members have made purple baby hats. And on April 28, I will be at the Franklin Park library branch on Route 27. These appearances all are free, of course. Please come to one of the library appearances if you can.

I lazed around most of Saturday morning, but I decided that as the knitting blogger/columnist of mycentraljersey.com, I had better make an appearance at the yarn shops in Fanwood, Westfield and Summit, so I went out about 11 a.m. It was a lovely day, and I wore a long dress and my Petalicious sweater. It was almost warm enough.

The yarn on the left is the Berroco Remix yarn I got at Knit-a-Bit. The gold yarn on the left is the yarn I bought at Do Ewe Knit?

Stopping first at Knit-a-bit in Fanwood, I saw Susan, the owner, and Kathy Giardina. I got the free pattern, bought a ball of Berroco Remix to go with the pattern I got, and enjoyed looking around, but I didn’t buy much.

At Do Ewe Knit?, I enjoyed seeing Toby Roxanne Barna and talking to her about her hand-dyed yarns. It was all sock yarn, which I tend not to use, so it was easy to say “no.” But it was beautiful yarn, and I told her when she gets some DK or worsted weight yarn, she should let me know.

Off the main room was a small room with Karen, the owner, and some of her friends. They were eating lunch, but they invited me into the room, and I was transfixed by the 50-percent-off shelves there. It t00 was mostly sock and fine yarn, but I managed to find a few worsted weight hanks. Two were gold and two were orange. Together they made an interesting autumn pairing, especially if you added in some red which was a similar weight but a different brand of yarn. As I was succumbing into buying it, I decided against the red, then decided that if I’m not an orange person, I would not buy the orange, and I gave up on the red because even at 50-percent off, it was really expensive. In the end, I bought the two gold hanks.

This is the pink Panama yarn I bought at Wool and Grace in Summit. Can’t wait to use it.

At Wool and Grace, I found 9 pink balls of a cotton-linen blend from Rowan, and I bought them all ($5 per ball). That will be a sweater for me one of these years.

And then I went to the Blue Purl to see if they had any hanks left of the Ultra Pima same variegated colorway that I had bought at the Yarn Attic. Apparently, they sold out just before I arrived. So I turned in my passport and went home.

Last night, Lynne and I had dinner and compared our Wool Walk purchases. She got some nice stuff, too. She’s going to Pennington today, and I had considered going, but I’ve spent way too much money, so I am going to stay home.

Now I really want to finish up the Zephirine cardigan that is on my needles. I have half a row left before I start on the lace yoke. This is actually a surprise, because I didn’t realize there was a standard raglan section for four inches between the lace yoke and the bottom of the underarm. If I had known that, I probably would not have put off knitting this sweater from November to March. This afternoon will be a good time to get the lace started.

I will be at the Warren Library tomorrow morning with Karen Van Ravenswaay, so if you have knitting or crochet projects, bring them along. We’ll be there from 10 a.m. to 11:30.

I told Andrea as we started out yesterday morning that if she got to the point when she reached her limit, we could stop and there would be no hard feelings. Both of us had spent more than we wanted, and both of us were tired, but we were excited to see what the day would bring.

We started at the Yarn Attic, where I was planning to buy a little more of the Cascade Pima Cotton yarn that I had bought at the Leprechaun’s Stash Party. However, somebody had beat me to it, and there was none left. Andrea, though, found some gorgeous alpaca yarn in a dark teal that she wanted to use for a poncho pattern she’d bought at the Blue Purl. The Yarn Attic was one hank short, but I had seen the pattern and knew it was the kind of thing you could add a different color to at the bottom for a border. When I suggested that, she thought that was a PERFECT solution, so she picked out two purple hanks and bought them all. I can’t wait to see the poncho.

KnIt’s Fabulous is open and airy, and it has a terrific inventory.

From there, we went to KnIt’s Fabulous in Marlboro, a shop I had never been to before. We had the best time there! The folks were really nice, and the shop is bright and airy, with a really terrific inventory. I found some Baby Bamboo yarn that looked yummy, but I left it behind. Instead, I got another giant hank of Blue Heron yarn in the Deep Blue Sea colorway (my third), two size 7 circular needles with square shafts from Knitter’s Pride and a ball of multicolored sock yarn for doll’s clothes. Whew. Andrea got some stuff, too. And everybody liked the shirt that Andrea made me, which says, “It’s not hoarding if it’s yarn.”

Here’s Andrea in the spiky red hair, picking out a pattern, and the owner, wearing a beautiful lady sweater she’d knitted from a Ysolde Teague pattern. She changed the sleeves to a bell shape, and I love it.

Then we went to Chelsea, a shop I’ve been hearing about for a couple of years. A bit smaller than Knits Fabulous, but with a similar friendly vibe. Chelsea has a great selection of Berocco’s Modern Cotton yarn, a yarn I’m using in the Mixed Moods pullover that I started last summer. I am afraid I may run out of purple yarn, so I checked my projects page on Ravelry, and the purple I am using is not Modern Cotton. Too bad. I did buy a hank of another purple cotton yarn, though, that I may be able to get away with in that sweater. If not, I’ll have plenty of blue-green and white yarn leftover to make something else and add the new purple to it. I also got a couple of shaw fasteners: a shawl pin with beads at one end to wear with my pink sweaters and my Diminishing Rib cardigan, which is a heather color, and a very nice circle-and-stick pin, which I bought because the stick looks like a twig that grew with a vine wrapped around it, so that it’s twisted.

At Delicious Orchards, Andrea took this shot of me wearing the shirt she made for me. It says, “It’s not hoarding if it’s yarn.”

Chelsea is in the Orchards shopping center next to Delicious Orchards, so we went there for lunch. I had a salad that was way too much for one meal and Andrea had a wrap sandwich that also was generous. We ate at the outside tables and enjoyed resting for a bit. And then we assessed the day.

We had both blown our budgets, and we were both well satisfied and happy. And we were a little tired. I asked Andrea if she wanted to stop, and she was tempted.

“How far is a Stitch in Time?” she asked. We figured out it was 14 miles away, so we decided to go there and call it quits. Michele Vail, the owner, was delighted to see us, and I was glad to finally see her shop because Michele had invited me to come on that river cruise with Nicky Epstein a few years ago. I found two more hanks of the berry-colored Cascade Ultra Pima DK yarn that I’d bought the day before at the Blue Purl, and Andrea bought a pattern. Now between the Leprechaun’s Stash yarn from the Yarn Attic and the solid berry yarn from the Blue Purl and A Stitch in Time, I can make something wonderful.

We headed home after that and we’re doing fine until we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts and I accidentally left my iPhone behind. We had to turn around in rush hour traffic and go back for it, but thankfully, someone had turned it in, and I got it back. We headed home as two very happy campers, grateful for our day, our purchases, and my phone.

Now, I have to make some decisions about today. There are three shops in Union County that I ought to visit because they’re in our circulation area, and I like them. I don’t really want to spend more money, but I do want to turn my Wool Walk passport in. So we’ll see. I may hold off and go tomorrow after church. I’m really tempted to stay home today, relax, knit, swim and maybe take my lawnmower to the repair shop because it won’t start and my lawn is starting to look shaggy.

If you haven’t gone on the NJ Wool Walk yet and you’re here in NJ, go out and have a good time. I am really glad I went. It’s inspiring.

If you are reading this as an email, go over to www.mycentraljersey.com/institches in a little while and read it there, too. I’m going to post some video with it.

Yesterday was Day 1 of the four-day NJ Wool Walk. Andrea Rich, editor of the Lebanon Daily News, and I were going to start at the Yarn Attic in Hillsborough because it’s the closest shop to my house, but we decided to start at the Blue Purl in Madison because a designer, Antonia Shankland, was going to be there. She was there, but we never interacted with her. Instead, we studied the yarn.

This Rowan SoftKnit Cotton is going to be something wonderful; probably not baby hats, though.

The Blue Purl always has close-out sales at the front of the store for the Wool Walk, and I ended up buying 13 balls of Rowan Softknit Cotton yarn in shades of purple and aqua/turquoise. My original intent for this very soft yarn was baby hats, but now that I have so much of it, I’m thinking it will be a sweater for me.

The solid color Ultra Pima Cotton was what I bought yesterday to go with multicolor Ultra Pima Cotton that I bought at the Leprechaun’s Stash Party.

I also found two hanks of Cascade Ultra Pima Cotton DK weight in a beautiful berry color that goes perfectly with the multicolor varigated same yarn that I bought at the Yarn Attic during the Leprechaun’s Stash on St. Patrick’s Day. Those yarns combined will also make a wonderful sweater.

Andrea bought a very nice poncho pattern. With our purchases, each of us received a skein of free yarn and a pattern to go with it.

This yarn will make great doll clothes.

However, finding the yarn that I had told myself would be my main purchase for the whole weekend, the 2 hanks of Cascade Ultra Pima, was a disaster to my self discipline. I managed to not buy anything at our next stop, Trillium (sorry Bev), but then we went to 3 stores I had never been to in Bergen County: KniTapestry, Yarn Diva and More and Yarndevouz. At KnitTapestry, I bought some Regia sock yarn that Karen Van Ravensway and I like, which will be for doll clothes. I also stocked up on Addi needles because Nancy Cole, the owner, had tons of them and she said they are “cheep Addis” because she buys them at auctions. They were 20 percent off.

I now have enough of this Macaibo yarn to make something really great for myself.

At Yarn Diva and More in Hillsdale, I scored big; let me explain. Back in the days when Jean Smalley was selling off the inventory at Down Cellar, she had this gorgeous shiny yarn called Macaibo, and she sold me the last 6 balls of it in the green colorway. It wasn’t quite enough yarn to make anything, but I loved it and have been looking for more, since. I think it was discontinued, but Yarn Diva and More had tons of it in several colors. I bought all the green they had (7 skeins). It’s not the same dye lot as the stuff from Down Cellar, but this is a multicolor yarn and I think the two dye lots will blend pretty well. Again, could be another sweater for me, or a big shawl. I have some solid green yarn I might use with it to separate the two dye lots.

Andrea scored big at our last stop, Yarndevous. She bought several hanks of multicolor yarn, and while they were winding it for her, I got to talking with the owner. She showed us a book of cute baby patterns, and I told her about our purple baby hats for the Click for Babies campaign, and she promised to get some of her customers to knit purple baby hats for us. How cool is that?

I didn’t buy any yarn there, but I did get a 60-inch size 7 Addi needle. You’ve gotta buy stuff like that when you see it.

We finished up at Yarndevous just in time to hit rush-hour traffic on Interstate 80. It was a great day for me and Andrea, but not so great for my bank account. I’m going to have to be really frugal for the rest of the weekend.

Today, we are going to do the southern route (except we are not going to Burlington or Camden County). We will start at Yarn Attic and then hit the Monmouth County shops, Chelsea, A Stitch in Time and KnIt’s Fabulous. On the way back, we’ll hit the Pennington shop, Knit One Stitch Too. On Saturday, we’ll hit the three shops in Union County, Do Ewe Knit (where Toby Barna will put in an appearance), Knit A Bit, and Wool and Grace.

In spite of my addiction to yarn, I have never hit so many yarn shops in such a short span of time. The memories of each shop are already starting to blur, but I have to say, it’s pretty fun.

Post navigation

About the author

Pam MacKenzie
Our real estate editor, Pam MacKenzie, expresses her creative side in this blog about knitting. Pam learned to knit at age 6, when her friend’s mother made Pam’s doll a dress, and Pam wanted to make more. Her mother wanted her to learn how to sew in high school, but she was afraid of the sewing machines, cutting fabric the wrong way, and the potential that sewing would have for bringing down her grade-point average. Every year, she managed to find a course conflict to avoid sewing classes. But the day after high school graduation, she took her graduation money to a fabric store, bought a kit to make a sweater, taught herself to read patterns and never looked back. These days, she knits a prayer shawl every month, along with sweaters, tote bags, gift bags and other goodies. She also designs many of her projects. Read More About PamE-mail Pam